[lit-ideas] Re: On the peopling of the British Isles
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 May 2014 12:36:12 -0400 (EDT)
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty,
this seat of Mars ... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
So there's Skyes's Helena (as in Helena of Troy), which becomes
Oppenheimer's Helina.
And Sykes's Velda which becomes Oppenheimer's Vera -- as in Vera Lynn
There's Sykes's Oisin, which becomes Oppenheimer's Ruisko.
In a typical Oxonian fashion, Oppenheimer attempts to divide this in 16
clusters.
There's Sykes's Wodan which becomes Oppenheimer's Ivan.
In an Oxonian way (he is a lecturer at Oxford), Oppenheimer has been able
to divide this into 3 clear clusters.
And there's Sykes's Germanic sounding Sigurd which becomes Oppenheimer's
Russian sounding Rostov.
L. Helm was wondering about genetic markers' nicknames. I found a
correspondence at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_British_Isles
excerpts of which I append in ps.
It seems the subtitle of Oppenheimer's book has changed along the editions.
Helms quotes it as:
The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain
-- where 'new prehistory' is bound to catch readers!
In a message dated 5/7/2014 10:53:57 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
[T]he advantage of his [Oppenheimer's research] is that he is attempting
to look at all the most recent data, recheck the various conclusions and
draw new ones if necessary."
Helm goes on:
"The advantage of studying the British Isles is that during the LGM (the
coldest part of the last ice age) the Isles were either covered by Ice or an
uninhabitable icy desert."
"In other places there was continuity, but not on these islands."
"At some point people came from some place and colonized them."
"The ideas scoffed at by Sellar and Yeatman are old and abandoned my most
scholars."
"Genetic studies have pretty much convinced everyone that Romans, Jutes,
Frisians, Vikings, Angles, Saxons and Normans were not as big a deal as was
once thought."
--- This may depend on the Griceian meaning of 'big' (or 'big a deal'). I
would think that since the Angles inflicted (as it were) THEIR mother tongue
to EVERYBODY (almost -- vide "The Celtic Fringe") on the islands is enough
of an indication that the deal was big enough for -- them and me!
Helm continues:
"A "foundation stock" was already there, perhaps as early as 12,000 bc and
it stayed there and flourished during all the famous invasions."
But the language was lost and so, from a literary point of view, the
foundation stock is pretty irrelevant as _foundation_ to a culture or nurture,
if not to nature.
Helm:
"When in recorded history these invasions took place, some of them were of
the same stock as the people who were already there."
Helm goes on to quote from Oppenheimer:
"At the time of the great post-LGM European expansion of 15,000 years
ago, there was no North Sea."
-- which is what allowed the Angles to sail from ANGELN (in Germany) and
anchor their boats in what they will later call Angla-land (reduced to
Ang-land for euphonic reasons).
Oppenheimer:
"Instead, there was a flat grassy plain stretching all the way from Poland
and the southern Baltic, through southern Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Frisia
and Holland across the North Sea and into eastern England."
Oppenheimer:
"In fact, had they wished, our forebears could have WALKED in a straight
line all the way from Berlin to Belfast, although in practice they seemed to
prefer wandering along beaches."
--- as most do today.
Oppenheimer:
"If it still existed today, the North Sea Plain would be in the centre of
the Ingert distribution. Ingert dates overall in Europe to 21,000 years and
may have originated in a Balkan Ice Age refuge."
Oppenheimer:
"Three British founding clusters from Ingert date to around 13,000, 14,000
and 12,000 years ago, respectively. This suggests a pre-Younger Dryas (i.e.
Late Upper Palaeolithic) spread for at least part of the Ingert branch.
While Ingert is present at a low rate of about 3.3% throughout the British
Isles, this figure rises to over 10% on parts of the English north-east
coastal region, in particular York and Norfolk. Given this distribution, the
age
of Ingert in the British Isles, and the fact that he is no more common on
the neighbouring Continent, the chances are that this represents the echo
of an ancient intrusion."
An ancient PECULIAR insular intrusion.
Oppenheimer:
"To me this is the first of a series of specific, dated, early British
genetic intrusions from the Continent which tend to mitigate claims of a later
Anglo-Saxon genocide."
Helm comments:
"Some place Oppenheimer said that during the Younger Dryas the [North] sea
dropped something like 127 feet. That apparently permitted the North Sea
area to become the plains he refers to. So while I'm not willing to read
all the books that Oppenheimer did, his argument seems persuasive that after
the Younger Dryas receded and temperatures warmed, southern parts of
Britain, Wales, and Ireland (which during the Younger Dryas had land extended
much further south than it does today), enabling groups to walk across the
North Sea Plain as early 12,000 bc forming the foundation stock that spread
north as the ice receded."
Yes, it is a good plausible idea.
Note that today, a Frenchman can literally walk to London, too!
Helm:
"Except . . . there are apparently two famous "refuges" where people
clustered during the Younger Dryas, the Basque and the Balkan. The first
people
to people the British Isles, in Oppenheimer's opinion came from the Basque
refuge. Those people moved north peopling the Western Area of Europe
which included crossing the grassy plain which is now the North Sea. The
earlier view was that this peopling was done from the Balkan refuge, spreading
people across central Europe and then to the British Isles."
I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Since apparently these two refuges had a common origin, one wonders if
which one was operative in the genetic background of a people whose language is
lost matters to the Queen of England!?
Helm:
"I do wonder about the names various scholars assign to genetic markers,
"Ingert" for example. There is some sort of fame involved, like naming a
mountain or a feature on Mars. Do scholars acknowledge other scholars marker
names? Some time ago I read Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, the genetic roots
of Britain and Ireland by Bryan Sykes. He assigns a number of names
represented by genetic markers, but I don't find those names in Oppenheimer's
book. Since Sykes wrote his book in 2006 and Oppenheimer in 2012 perhaps
Oppenheimer is using more recently identified genetic markers."
Perhaps what we need is
"A List of British Genetic Markers: from A to Z.
Helm:
"However, I thought that only the discoverer of these markers got to name
them and I hadn't the impression that Oppenheimer was doing research that
extended to the identification of markers. That worries me a little, for if
he is renaming other researchers' markers, how will the casual reader ever
keep track?"
Interesting. It reminds me of the American robin and the European robin. I
suppose Grice would say that they implicate the SAME BIRD.
I.e. When a colonial saw the "American" robin, he said, "Wow, a robin." He
was thinking of the European robin. It may be argued then that 'robin' is
ambiguous -- as per Linnaeus -- but I would argue, alla Grice, it ain't.
Below then what Wikipedia refers to Sykes's and Oppenheimer's nicknames.
Cheers,
Speranza
From the Wikipedia link mentioned above. Cross-references: Sykes,
Oppenheimer:
In 2007 Bryan Sykes produced an analysis of 6000 samples from the OGAP
project in his book Blood of the Isles.
Later, Stephen Oppenheimer in his 2006 book The Origins of the British used
the data from Weale et al. (2002), Capelli et al. (2003) and Rosser et al.
(2000) for Europe.
In opposition to Neolithic origin theories, which remain strong, Sykes and
Oppenheimer argued for significant immigration from the Iberian peninsula
into Britain and Ireland.
Much of this argument depended on Y DNA evidence, however by 2010 several
major Y DNA studies presented more complete data, showing that the
oldest-surviving male lineages had mostly migrated to Britain from the Balkans,
and
ultimately from the Middle East, not from Iberia.
This of course confirms Oppenheimer instead of contradicting him because he
explicitly states that the genetic evidence indicates that the British
original populations came from Anatolia (middle east) along the north shore of
the Mediterranean Sea (including the Balkans) and through Iberia to the
British isles.
Another subject in the literature which has been widely discussed is
whether genetics can show signs of Germanic invasions particularly in England.
In a widely cited but not unanimously accepted article, Weale et al. (2002)
went as far as arguing that the Y DNA data showed signs of a racial
"apartheid" in Anglo-Saxon England. Oppenheimer, however, disputed this
conclusion, emphasising the native element in British paternal inhertance.
That there are relatively clear signs of Germanic influx in parts of
Britain is accepted and has been shown in other studies such as Capelli et al.
(2003).
However, the Capelli study made two important observations: that there was
a continuing indigenous element to English paternal genetic make up, and
that North German/Frisian and Danish genetic frequences were
indistinguishable, thus precluding any ability to distinguish between the
genetic influence
of the Anglo-Saxon source populations and the later, and better
documented, influx of Danish Vikings.
Sykes and Oppenheimer have each given nicknames to various haplogroups to
allow easier recognition, including the principal ones in the Isles.
Below the normal scientific names are given, followed by the popularized
"clan names" of Sykes, and in some cases also of Oppenheimer:
mtDNA
• Haplogroup H (mtDNA) Helena (Sykes), Helina (Oppenheimer)
• Haplogroup I (mtDNA) Isha
• Haplogroup J (mtDNA) Jasmine
• Haplogroup T (mtDNA) Tara
• Haplogroup V (mtDNA) Velda (Sykes), Vera (Oppenheimer)
• Haplogroup W (mtDNA) Wanda
• Haplogroup X (mtDNA) Xenia
• Haplogroup U (mtDNA) Europa (Oppenheimer)
...and within U...
• Haplogroup U2 (mtDNA) Uta
• Haplogroup U3 (mtDNA) Uma
• Haplogroup U4 (mtDNA) Ulrika
• Haplogroup U5 (mtDNA) Ursula
As with mitochondrial haplogroups not only Sykes but also Stephen
Oppenheimer chose to popularize the concept by giving them "clan names". The
following gives their normal scientific names.[16]
• Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA). Oisin (Sykes), Ruisko (Oppenheimer). Oppenheimer
attempted to divide this in 16 clusters.[17]
• Haplogroup I (Y-DNA). Wodan (Sykes), Ivan (Oppenheimer). Oppenheimer was
able to divide this into 3 clear clusters. The two most important were
• I1 (Ian)
• I2 (Ingert), now known as I2b[18]
• Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA). Sigurd (Sykes), Rostov (Oppenheimer)
• Haplogroup E1b1b (Y-DNA). Eshu (Sykes)
• Haplogroup J (Y-DNA). Re (Sykes)
REFERENCES:
Kevin D. Campbell (2007). "Geographic patterns of R1b in the British Isles
– deconstructing Oppenheimer". Journal of Genetic Genealogy 3 (2): 63–71.
Stephen Oppenheimer (2006). The Origins of the British: a Genetic Detective
Story.
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